We'd met everyone in our immediate "neighborhood", such as it is. Neighborhoods here generally coalesced into water districts, so ours consisted of the 12 homes in our water district. We were the last house on the southern edge, there was another house just north of us within screaming distance through the trees (in summer we couldn't see it when the trees were leafed out) and across a country lane to the north were the other 10 houses. We in the unique position of not being within visual range of anyone else on our almost 3 acres of land. The rest of the houses were close together on long, narrow 50 foot wide lots at the top of the bluff overlooking the sound. On a warm summer day when everyone had their windows open in any of those houses--for in the Northwest central air for homes was almost non-existent--one could easily hear conversations taking place in the house next door. So I particularly appreciated our setting of complete privacy.
For 17 years we had been living in a homogenous neighborhood where everyone was in pretty much the same income bracket and had many of the same interests, i.e., golf: borrrrring! Here, thankfully, everyone was different, including their socioeconomic status, and I began to enjoy getting to know the differences.
There were retired couples, one of whom had lived here, it seemed, forever and who'd owned and operated a tiny grocery store on the island; another couple whom I suspected were on the fringe of the original hippie movement, with a modest house and modest jobs, who grew their own food, bartered for services, and eschewed television; those who held hourly wage labor jobs, a teacher, a salesman, a nurse, in other words, a perfect slice of American life!
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